You may or not like Fellini's extravagance ... and there's plenty to be had in "Roma". You may dislike the movie going back and forth in time, and around a period in history which you can't even relate to; you may dislike the lack of plot, the series of episodes from the director's past or fantasies. You may not share his vision of Rome, its women, its chaos, its fascist monuments and its hippies. You may not even be at all interested in Fellini's world and may find his movies, boring, or uninteresting. This one will be no exception, then. Well... After all, we did not all like Citizen Kane either.
For one thing is beyond doubt: Fellini's Roma is a true, genuine, masterpiece, one of the last gems coming out of the relentless, colourful imagination of an Italian director, who from La Strada to Amarcord, in some 15 years of movie-making, was able to concoct classic movies and nothing but. Fellini's Roma is a series of exaggerations (the characters, chaos, the brothels, the nights in Rome...) as Rome can be. It is an absolute tribute to a city one thousand times destroyed, one thousand times reborn, to the "city of illusions" as Gore Vidal puts is. It is above all a tribute to the Romans, who basically "could not care less whether you are alive or dead". And who better to capture this than Federico Fellini?
For one thing is beyond doubt: Fellini's Roma is a true, genuine, masterpiece, one of the last gems coming out of the relentless, colourful imagination of an Italian director, who from La Strada to Amarcord, in some 15 years of movie-making, was able to concoct classic movies and nothing but. Fellini's Roma is a series of exaggerations (the characters, chaos, the brothels, the nights in Rome...) as Rome can be. It is an absolute tribute to a city one thousand times destroyed, one thousand times reborn, to the "city of illusions" as Gore Vidal puts is. It is above all a tribute to the Romans, who basically "could not care less whether you are alive or dead". And who better to capture this than Federico Fellini?